Introduction: Thinking about seeds

Abstract

Seed diversity is crucial to the sustainability of food and agricultural systems. Yet as Michel Pimbert's survey of the global 'state of seeds' reveals, both wild and domesticated varieties are disappearing under an onslaught of human-driven pressures. Planetary crises-the sixth great extinction and climate change-constitute one. Industrialized agriculture is another: just three crops (maize, rice and wheat) currently supply over 60% of the calories humanity obtains from food. The impacts of this impoverishment on small and Indigenous farmers, ecosystems, food security and human health are manifold, and understanding them demands that we unravel a range of intermeshed social and political factors. Disparities in wealth, gender and ethnicity, for instance, determine the way seeds are cultivated, conserved, collected and exchanged. And the primary domains of seed governance-state, corporate and farm-wield different, often unequal powers. By confronting these complexities, Pimbert asserts, we can map ways of managing seeds equitably, to support human and planetary wellbeing.